The Decline of the EU's Role toward Iran From JCPOA Mediation to Legal Presence without Strategic Centrality, ۲۰۱۵-Early ۲۰۲۶

This article examines the decline of the EU's role toward Iran from the relative high point of JCPOA mediation to early ۲۰۲۶. The central problem is why the European Union, despite its important role in shaping, coordinating, and sustaining the JCPOA diplomatic process, moved in less than a decade from the position of a relatively central actor to a situation in which it remains present in the Iran file but has lost much of its earlier capacity for independent influence and for steering the course of the crisis. The theoretical framework draws on EU actorness and role theory and assesses the EU's role through opportunity, presence, and capability. Using a process-tracing case study, documentary analysis, and a limited use of the structural findings of Baniasadi's thesis, the article traces three mechanisms: the gap between EU diplomacy and the economic backing needed to support it; the redefinition of Iran in the EU's threat perception, especially after the Ukraine war; and the layering of pressure regimes across nuclear, safeguards-related, human-rights, military, and geopolitical domains. The main finding is that the EU's role has declined through a reduced capacity to convert legal, institutional, and symbolic presence into strategic influence, rather than through its removal from the Iran file.

کلیدواژه ها:

European Union ، Iran ، JCPOA ، actorness ، role crisis ، threat perception